Today, I’m going to show you some monster-sized single-celled organisms: giant fusulinid forams from the western flank of the Franklin Mountains in west Texas, beyond El Paso. I saw these critters in February when I went on a field trip there led by Josh Villalobos of El Paso Community College.
Here’s the scene where we found these fossils (view is west towards New Mexico):
To prepare you to check out these things, examine this sketch I just drew. You will be looking at cross-sections through the architecture of the protist’s body:
Okay, now that your search image is primed, you can examine the photos:
When I’ve shown fusulinids on my blog before, it was to illustrate pressure solution. These Texas fusulinids don’t show any evidence of P-sol, but rather serve as exemplars of undeformed strain markers.
They are HUGE! Remember that each of these is a single-celled organism – one nucleus per critter. Unlike a lot of forams, these fusulinids are interpreted to have been benthic (bottom-dwellers), not planktonic (floaters).
Here’s a nice end-on cross-section:
Same sample, but rotated a bit to better catch the light:
Awesome. Everything’s bigger in Texas – even the extinct single-celled organisms!
Great photos. If they were from “Oz” I would expect them to be “pizonous” (“I” as in “eye”) AND big.
Wow– those are pretty neat, Callan! Also– the last line of your post is great!
An interesting article about fusulinids from Slovenia
http://www.geologija-revija.si/dokument.aspx?id=501
Great use of color photos to illustrate that article on Upper Carb/Perm rocks in Slovenia.
Great close ups and great use of light and color. I’m a photographer myself and I not only love the detail and quality of the picture but also I am amazed at the condition of the fossils.